


Be like water

by kaberett



Series: my voice is in the earth [3]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Comment Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:12:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaberett/pseuds/kaberett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halfway around the world, Katara pauses for a moment amidst her pillars of ice; she pauses, and she smiles, and she breathes out her love in a sigh and a billow of frost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be like water

Korra was too young, too strong, too healthily self-absorbed, back then, to notice that Katara always looked at her with fondness and amusement and a terrible sadness mingling in her eyes.

It is years before she learns: how to reach first not for fire, not for earth, but for water.

Katara was somewhere between disappointed and relieved - a dim and distant ache - when Korra emerges from Tenzin's tutelage largely unaltered, in that respect, if a little more open to thinking before acting. (It is not so very different, after all, from how she carries herself in battle: all that has changed is the timescale.)

No: she was not surprised that Tenzin, creature of the air that he is, could not teach Korra this, though her heart is heavy with the knowledge that Tenzin's family will always be - must always be - first and foremost not of the Southern Water Tribe, but Air Nomads. (She wondered, idly, how it was that sport bending did not teach Korra this; and then she remembers that Korra has always been very good at learning only what she wishes to, only what she considers needful.)

No: what startles her is that it is Lin who pushes Korra home - who teachers her how to be a water-bender, as well as an Avatar.

It is Lin who leads by example: who takes her morning tea with her feet buried in the cool earth; who grounds herself with her hands and her back on rock; who disappears without warning into the mountains and returns with the hint of a smile on her face.

It is Lin who finally snaps, one afternoon, as Korra accompanies her (when duty calls; it always does). It is Lin who pulls her up smartly; who curtly instructs her to stop messing around with metal; who softens, a very little, and explains that maybe, just maybe, she'll find herself less in need of bravado and swagger if she's more comfortable on her home surf.

And because despite herself Korra wants - not even to impress Lin; merely to win her approval - she hunches her shoulders, and she mutters and sulks, and that evening she and Naga go down to the water's edge, and they sit. And so it goes on: the next night, and the next, stretching into weeks.

Slowly - not in fits and starts, but in the trickle of water through moss, or the gradual advance of the tide upon the shore - her heart eases.

Halfway around the world, Katara pauses for a moment amidst her pillars of ice; she pauses, and she smiles, and she breathes out her love in a sigh and a billow of frost.

**Author's Note:**

> 2am fic for [a prompt-meme by elliemurasaki](http://elliemurasaki.dreamwidth.org/458214.html); very loosely one of my Lin/Korra snippets, but only if you want it to be.


End file.
